


Venus in Retrograde

by Meatball42



Series: Stars Aligned [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), F/M, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 08:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14516640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Natasha finds her lover again in Wakanda, like a bottle thrown to the sea and washed up on a distant shore.





	Venus in Retrograde

**Author's Note:**

> Written (but not finished, cause I suck) before the movie came out, this series is loosely inspired by the ‘Chant’ TV spot. In this part, the Avengers’ arrival in Wakanda. So, not IW compliant.

Wakanda’s vibranium mound was the target of a growing threat from forces beyond the galaxy. For the first time in known history, Wakanda asked for outside assistance. So of course, the Avengers heeded the call.

The jet touched down in Wakanda’s capital city. Natasha had spent the flight going over their intel on the country and the situation. Both were sparse, but at the very least she’d thought she was ready for surprises.

She was wrong.

Barnes was standing at the front of the welcoming procession, a few people to the right of the king himself. “You didn’t mention that,” she muttered under her breath, knowing Steve would hear her.

Luckily, Steve had the decorum to greet King T’Challa first, but it was less than a minute before he managed to step aside. Sam took his place, but before he could greet the king, T’Challa and his advisor turned to watch as Steve spoke to his friend. Natasha was surprised again when Barnes smiled at Steve and the Wakandan retinue seemed to soften with it.

After the brief moment, the introductions continued. Natasha respectfully greeted the king and gently tested that there were no hard feelings for their last meeting in Leipzig. T’Challa waved away the insinuation with a humor that had been understandably absent at the time. He introduced his general, a tall, hard-looking woman with her hand tight around a spear, who curled her lip at Natasha disdainfully.

Sam had joined Steve and Barnes in a small circle, and he made room for her when she walked up. “Natasha, you haven’t met the yeti properly, have you?”

Steve huffed and Barnes rolled his eyes at what seemed to be an on-going joke. “You don’t like it, get a haircut,” Sam said to Barnes.

“It’s good to meet you finally,” Natasha said, extending her hand with a calculatedly sincere and sweet smile. “Steve’s talked you up so much, it’s gonna be hard to fill your own shoes.”

He smiled back as he shook her hand, and Natasha resisted the urge to flinch. “I’ll do my best,” Barnes said quietly. The look his his eyes was so familiar… she had to force herself to let go of him, act natural. The king’s general was watching her.

Later on, after the strategizing session that went for into the late afternoon, Barnes invited the three of them to dinner. He led them through the palace to a small set of richly decorated rooms, hidden down a quiet round hallway. Steve ribbed him about having a room in the royal palace and Barnes teased him in turn about his new beard, which Sam joined in on. Then the super soldier pair went into the kitchen to make dinner, and Natasha and Sam relaxed in a solarium with a gorgeous view of the sunset.

“It’s a pretty neat place, huh,” Sam said, looking out the windows at the rolling hills speckled with herds and the occasional cluster of buildings. From the high hill the palace was on, they could see for miles and miles.

Natasha hummed agreement. There was enough emotion loaded in Sam’s voice that she didn’t want to interfere with. And indeed, the former airman went silent, staring out over Wakanda, until Steve and Barnes started bringing out dishes.

“Got yourself a nice set-up here, Bucky Bear,” Sam said as they settled in to eat. 

“Yeah, I’m lucky,” Barnes agreed. “They’ve been good to me here.”

“Any chance you could hook a brother up? I wouldn’t mind a vacation once we clear up this Star Wars mess.”

“You’d have to ask T’Challa,” Barnes demured, digging into his dinner.

Sam tched, but let it go, though Natasha was sure he’d find a way to bring it up again eventually.

The conversation after that was unbalanced. Steve and Barnes spent most of dinner talking to each other, a mix of references to their past lives and sharing their current ones. Natasha and Sam let it be, both happy for Steve to finally reconnect with the person he’d gone through so much to save. Plus, it turned out Barnes had some pretty great stories about Steve being a little shit, so of course Natasha and Sam had to reply with some stories about Steve being a bigger little shit, so everyone but Steve ended up thoroughly enjoying themselves.

By the time Steve’s blush faded, the sun had passed just beyond the horizon and an evening chill was touching the air. “We should get going,” Steve said, though it was clear from the way his eyes kept returning to Barnes that he didn’t really want to go.

Barnes walked them to the door- more specifically, he walked Steve to the door, and Sam and Natasha got to follow. They shared a look about how hilarious yet kind of adorable the pair was, with Sam scrunching up his nose over how gross it was. Natasha laughed silently.

“We’ll see you at 9 am?” Steve checked.

“I’ll be there.” Barnes opened the door to his rooms and let Steve out. They shared a last look before Steve nodded and turned away.

“Thanks for having us,” Sam said politely. “Dinner was great.” He offered a hand to shake, and Barnes took it suspiciously, which set Sam off laughing. He followed Steve into the hallway.

Natasha was about to say something along the same lines, but Barnes spoke first. “Can I talk to you?” he said quietly.

“Of course,” Natasha answered after a moment’s hesitation. Sam quirked his eyebrow from the hallway, but Natasha shook her head. “You go, I’ll catch up,” she told him, intentionally casual, as though her heart hadn’t started pounding. He nodded and headed up the round hallway with Steve.

Barnes tapped the doorframe, which must have had a sensor, because the door closed by itself. He stood facing it for a long, silent moment. When he turned back around, when Natasha saw his face again, it was different, transformed from the man who’d joked all evening with Sam and reminisced with Steve. She swallowed, desperately not letting any hope show on her face.

“So it’s Natasha now,” he murmured, and even his voice-

“You remember?” she said, just to be sure. It came out a bit hoarse.

He stepped closer, and it was her James who took her hand, or someone like him. “I remember you.”

She squeezed his hand and it tightened around hers. They stared at each other for a long minute, the implications of that sentence,  _ ‘I remember you,’ _ bouncing back and forth between them. For once, Natasha didn’t know what to say. All she could do was look at his face, memorizing each line with a new intensity.

James breathed in. “There’s a veranda, and I have wine.”

Natasha felt her lips curl up without her approval. “It doesn’t beat a fire escape and cheap vodka, but I’ll take it.”

He smiled back, eyes bright. It was a few seconds before he moved. Natasha followed him to the kitchen and James directed her to the small patio attached to his rooms. “I’ll be right out,” he told her, and his left hand trailed down her arm as she went.

A gentle orange light came on automatically as Natasha stepped outside and sat on long sofa, facing the same view she’d admired with Sam earlier. Although it was summer, there was just enough coolness in the evening breeze to make it comfortable. Natasha settled into the plush cushions, feeling herself trembling slightly. By the time James emerged with two glasses of a dark red wine in one hand and the bottle in the other, she’d calmed down, but a smile refused to extinguish itself on her lips.

James placed the bottle on the wide, low table in front of the sofa and handed Natasha her glass before sitting beside her, just as close as they used to. They locked eyes again and touched their glasses together before sipping. Natasha didn’t even feel the slightest urge to check her drink for drugs or poisons. She felt weightless, like she had all the time in the world, here at James’ side.

“How much do you remember?” she asked after they’d been sitting in comfortable silence for a while.

“Everything. Even the things I’d rather forget.” Ominous as his words were, James was tranquil. He took another sip of wine. “But the bad stuff- they fixed it so it’s like I’m watching it on a screen. It doesn’t hit me so hard.”

“That’s better?”

James looked out into the night, thinking before he answered. Natasha waited, knowing that he would tell her the truth, no matter how uncertain or ugly. It was one of the things she’d always loved about him.

“Forgetting wouldn’t mean none of it happened,” he said eventually. The words sat between them, heavy with the violence of the past. “It all happened. To me, to you, to the others. The targets, the handlers, it’s all real. But I don’t have to carry it around all the time. So yeah. It’s better.”

Natasha nodded. She followed his gaze into the night and tried to give back the gift of honesty he’d given her. It wasn’t easy, never was, even with James. “I don’t remember everything.”

He watched the side of her face, but didn’t interrupt as the pause lengthened.

“I don’t remember when they took you away. One of the other Widows told me what happened, and… I remember looking for you and finding the cryo freezer.”

His hand found her on her lap and she laced their fingers together.

“There’s a lot from that time I don’t remember. Before I left the Red Room. I tried to put it all in the past.” She shook her head slightly. “We know how well that works.”

“That why you didn’t tell Steve about us?”

Natasha looked at him sharply, but there was no censure in his easy expression. “Do you remember shooting me?”

It was James’ turn to flinch. He mumbled something affirmative and averted his eyes, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame you. I understood what was happening. You weren’t in there.”

He nodded, and she tightened her hand around his.

“But I thought you were gone. That they took me away from you like they took you away from me. And Steve was looking for his version of you, and that-” She turned back to the view, suddenly wrong-footed. “It seemed more likely you’d remember him. You kept trying to kill me, but you remembered him.”

“Department X was better at the memory stuff than Hydra,” James said tentatively.

Like it was his fault he’d had so much taken from him. Natasha shook her head, refusing to accept his apology. “I didn’t tell Steve because it was none of his business. It wasn’t going to help find you, and- I only remember so much. I knew he would have wanted every bit of it, in case it would help find you, and I didn’t want to give it up.”

Her cheeks burned. After a few moments, James unlaced their hands and reached up to brush his fingers against the spreading heat.

“It’s good he had you to watch his back,” he told her. “There’s nobody I’d trust more. And I’m glad you had him. Hope he didn’t get on your nerves too much.”

“I can handle him.”

They turned closer to each other. James took a lock of her hair between his fingers. “I like the blond.”

“I look washed out.”

“You look beautiful.”

“You always say that.”

“It’s always true.”

They grinned at each other, remembering a hundred old little arguments. James laid his arm across the back of the sofa and Natasha leaned into him. She reached up and brushed gentle fingers along the beard. “This is new.”

“I’m trying it out.”

Natasha nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. She’d tried out a lot of things, too, the first few years at SHIELD, when she was finally safe and secure, surrounded by friends and colleagues who probably weren’t going to try to kill her. Or so she’d thought at the time.

“I heard you got a new codename, too,” she said innocently.

James groaned. Natasha giggled, but leaned into the vibration she could feel in his chest. “Did Shuri spread that around everywhere?” he complained.

“I heard it from one of the mining tribe elders.”

“She probably made a Vine.”

“That ended years ago,” Natasha pointed out.

“Shuri kept it going within Wakanda.”

Smiling, Natasha drained her glass of wine and poured herself another. James held out his glass and she topped it off. She settled back even closer to him, and his arm closed around her shoulders.

Natasha reached across him and he brought his other arm closer so she could run her fingers over it. The panels on the new Wakandan arm were shaped differently than what she’d been used to, once upon a time. They laid together more smoothly, too. And most importantly-

“It’s not cold.”

She heard the hitch in James’ breathing, and when she looked away from the arm, a dirty grin was spreading across his face. “Disappointed?”

For a moment, the energy between them changed, heated the way it used to. His eyes flicked down to her lips, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling in humor, rather than lust, and as soon as she did his expression went from hungry to dopey, which just made Natasha laugh more in turn.

They snuggled closer, drank more wine, and watched the stars come out fully. It was a beautiful clear night, and having James in her arms again made it feel like paradise. Time flew by until a little shiver went through the air, rising from the ground.

Natasha twitched in readiness, but a single brush of James’ hand against her arm soothed her. “It’s the midnight watch. All is well.”

“I should get some sleep,” she said regretfully.

They stood up together, hands holding each other as they both wobbled just a bit. James walked her to the front door and laid his hand against it, engaging it to swish open.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, though the look in his eyes told her she could stay if she wanted to.

Natasha didn’t especially want to leave, either. She stepped into him and put her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. He held her tightly back.

James was just as warm as he always was, his enhancement putting off heat like an engine. But he smelled different than he used to, like the Wakandan clothes he wore and the outdoors of a different country than where they’d always known each other.

When she pulled back, his hands settled at her waist, comfortable, but not holding her from leaving. He’d never tried to keep her, not like so many other men who felt like they deserved a piece of her. The both of them had spent too many years owned by others to ever be possessive in that way. It was an unspoken understanding she’d never shared with anyone else.

For a moment, she wanted to kiss him. They were close enough, but when she looked into his eyes she could see he had the same thought, and they stepped back at the same time.

“9 am,” he reminded her. “Don’t be late.”

She graced him with a sardonic look, and he snickered as she walked away. When she glanced back before the turn of the hallway, he was leaning in the doorway, watching her go.


End file.
